1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a recognizing system for recognizing a detachable article and judging whether the article mounted is genuine.
Especially, this invention relates to an interchangeable article recognizing system. recognizing system. The recognizing system being operable for checking the quality or mounting state of the article or judging the interchangeable article to be genuine in which the interchangeable article may accommodate consumable materials or store informations regarding the article.
2. Description of Prior Art
Generally, the system which can demonstrate its inherit performance by attaching detachable articles has been realized in various fields.
Common problem in these articles is the existence of unauthorized and poorly efficient articles which are not genuine. Such inferior articles interrupt normal operations of apparatus to which the articles are attached.
Therefore, the system which is capable of judging whether the articles to be attached are genuine has strongly been desired. Furthermore, the system which can cope with the situation properly when the articles are not judged to be genuine has also been desired.
More particularly, such a system has especially desired when the articles contain consumptive materials.
Since these materials are generally mass-produced, it is hard to prevent quality variance of the materials caused by various production time and manufacturing plants. The articles are required to be replaced with new ones when the materials are exhausted. However, if the information concerning the materials is not fed back to the apparatus to which the articles are attached, disadvantages occur by the foregoing quality variance.
Thus, the system which can judge whether or not the articles to be attached are genuine, or in other words, whether or not the articles have sufficient quality to operate the apparatus has been desired. In addition, the system which can vary the operations of the apparatus according to judging results has been required.
The articles concerning the above-noted desired system actually extend to various fields, e.g., the articles including magnetic disks and memory elements which are attached to computers for carrying out various operations, the articles including photo-disks and magnetic films used in the audio field, automobile tires, various kinds of lighting apparatus and the like.
One of the fields which require such systems is the electrophotographic field.
Conventionally, the developer bottle, developing unit and PC unit are detachably attached to a copier, printer or the like. These articles are replaceable with new ones when exhausted.
In changing such articles used in the copier, printer or the like, it is necessary to use new replacements properly suited to the machine since characteristics vary from machine to machine.
Such consumable articles may have the same shape, but the quality of their contents, e.g. developer, often vary. Consequently, articles not suited to the machine could be mounted in error.
This problem is more complex with the toner bottle. That is, various types of electrophotographic copying machines including those capable of multicolor development have been devised, and toner bottles of the same shape may contain toners having different characteristics. In extreme cases, the color and polarity of toners, though genuine products, may vary with the time of manufacture and the manufacturing plant.
As a result, a toner bottle containing a toner of different characteristics such as in color and polarity could be attached to the machine in error, thereby replenishing the toner not suited to the machine. This gives rise to the problems of deteriorating the quality of recorded images and even causing a breakdown of the machine itself.
In recent years, various toner bottles have been developed as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publications Kokai Nos. 60-146265, 61-25168, 61-28979 and 61-35468. These toner bottles each include an identifying engagement portion or the like representing a toner color and other characteristics, in order to prevent a toner bottle containing a wrong type of toner from being attached to the machine.
However, errors of about 20% upward and downward could occur with the charge level of a toner in the manufacturing stage of the toner to be contained in the toner bottles. Because of this non-uniformity in charge level and other characteristics of the toner contained in the toner bottles, the density of images formed by the same machine can vary even where the toner bottles containing a toner having a color and other characteristics suited to that machine are used for replenishing purposes.